Some thoughts on a chilly spring morning on the side of a
mountain range
3/22/26
Life is full of probabilities and possibilities. Hopes and
dreams and fears and regrets. Fits of selfish delusions and selfless homecomings.
Of building and planning and neglecting and lapsing. Of zooming in and out,
trying to come to grips with limits, finding footings and losing them, struggling
to remember things—to remember the remembering of things—to make them feel permanent.
Of feeling our feet on the ground while gazing up at the birds. Of believing we
can be free when we know we cannot swim forever. Of finding ourselves and embracing
our cultures or wallowing in anxious uncertainty or choosing hubris whether we
know it or not. Of knowing. And unknowing. And undoing our knowing. We increasingly see a path or paths and we see others on them, and we accept or don't accept that our paths are similar but different. As I age, I see more clearly the paths those younger than me are on, and older. I know not if my eyesight is good, but I know that I see more of paths the longer my own path becomes.
With peace comes complacence. With suffering comes resolve.
With security comes adventurism. With dread comes humility. With having comes
wanting. With wanting comes having. And back and forth and up and down the
waves crash into one another or amplify one another as time and geography and life’s
insurance policy of the diffusion of intellect into billions of instances,
apart, propel differences in the current consciousness and the remembered
remembering of each group. Our boats are scattered all across the ocean. Our
realities are different. But we move and see and change and learn, and try to
remember. Unity is possible, fragmentation inevitable.
We wonder what the singularity might resemble, ignoring that
it has already occurred in each one of us. What if everything we perceive were
a construct of our imagination? What if we were truly alone in our universe?
Whether everything is real or not, we know we would seek complexity, risk, time,
geography—an existence. I know of nothing else. I cannot know of
anything else. Knowing is itself a feature of this existence. To transcend
here, knowing ceases to be relevant. Relevance matters here and only
here, inherently. Anywhere else where there is relevance must resemble here or
is irrelevant. My dreams of heaven are rooted here. This is what makes heaven
relevant, if ironic, given my struggle—our struggle—to believe we can
transcend.
And so many of us embrace this economic life, whether or not
we perceive there is no other choice. And if we want the power of choice, we
build and plan enough for long enough that the means arrive. And we watch the
weather and the waves and map the position of the boats and plot courses and draw
islands on the map, whether they are really there or not, and when those islands
are imaginary, some of us make them real, realizing that our maps are as real
as the sands under our feet. All that is real is what we choose to perceive or are
made to perceive. And so we write. We remember remembering. We spread the news,
good, bad or ugly. We bend the light with our mirrors of voice. When we don’t
like the light shone upon us, we light fires and blow things up—we create smoke
to obscure the light and then we reset the mirrors, or try to. Our writing too is
like the waves. In fact, it is the waves in the before. Small, big, fast,
choppy and farther out, tidal. The ice on Mars was an ocean. It is still water.
The ice on Antarctica was once a hundred different rivers or a million. It will
be again unless, like on Mars, it won’t be. Unless we choose to make it so. Mars
will never be like Earth. It is located differently. But we can make it into Mars.
Listen to me writing. Planting. Bending some light.
So what do I see now? What can I profit from, or profit from
feeling that I know? In my country my generation—those born of the baby boomers
and who are now beginning to finish raising our kids—have enjoyed great peace,
security and agency. I have used these blessings to pursue adventure, to
underachieve in acquisition of material symbols of wealth and instead to overachieve
in the charting of courses to other parts of the ocean. At least for a time. I
did plant roots and forget to travel. I lapsed in posting my triumphs for all to
see on my social media accounts. And then I remembered to remember again and to
embrace selfish delusion, and planned to shape my children around those values
and priorities that I aspired to in spite of my parents’ proclivity to
garnering things. I came to believe that experiences > things. That being
wealthy was being more experienced. That I could persist in underachieving and
choosing a perceived humility. I also believed in freedom. Given my location, I
had the luxury to do so. Now I see the tide changing…
